


Furnishings

by magnumnopus



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Gen, red is autistic but it isn't really obvious in this one i don't think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28731000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnumnopus/pseuds/magnumnopus
Summary: After a few months on Mount Silver, Red starts to miss some parts of his old life.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Furnishings

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a kind of spin off to a red/green fanfic i started writing, but i ended up finishing this way quicker. the other one may find its way here eventually but for now this is all i have. i wrote it because i read a whole bunch of other fanfics and i started thinking about how red lived up on mount silver and it was kind of sad to think he lived in a cave and so i decided he should live in a cabin, and then i started to think about how you would get anything up mount silver and i remembered rotom existed and i spent an hour thinking about this instead of sleeping.  
> i hope you enjoy

A few months living alone on a freezing mountain has proven to Red that perhaps there _are_ a few aspects of modern day life he’d prefer not to live without.

Primarily, a washing machine.

He doesn’t want to sound like a spoiled child, but he’s been washing his own clothes for the last two months, and it’s been a pain. He has Lapras help him out with the actual washing bit, but because it’s so cold outside his clothes tend to freeze rather than dry out. The process of drying out his clothes then becomes a week-long ordeal while he waits for a day when there isn’t a blizzard outside and he waits outside while Charizard makes sure everything is getting dry.

So, Red thinks, it’s probably about time he got himself a washer-dryer.

It’s not the first time he’s brought something huge up the mountain. As soon as he decided to live here, he got himself started building a home. He lived in a cave while he was putting it together, but with him and a team of six Pokemon, it didn’t take long. He moved out of the cave, and into a small cabin.

And, of course, since he was catching and training Pokemon, he needed a PC. Storage, transfer, healing Pokemon. It might have seemed like an impulsive decision, but he’d thought it through a lot. So he’d gone down to Bill and bought one from him. Charizard had helped him carry it up, and Pikachu keeps it charged. He doesn’t need to know how any other parts of it work. It work as it’s meant to, and that’s enough for Red.

This is his home, currently.

A log cabin with a bed and a PC. Since it’s mostly made of wood, he can’t let Charizard inside, but other than that, it’s proven to be sturdy. It hasn’t fallen down so far.

Everything else, he had _thought_ , he’d be able to solve himself. Food. Water. Washing himself and his Pokemon. And most of it worked out most of the time, except when he started training, and forgot to get food for tomorrow, so he had to go to bed without food, and then he’d wake up in the morning and his shirt was wet and there was nothing to eat and he’d have a meltdown.

So.

Red wants a washer-dryer. He isn’t sure where he’s going to get it, or how he’s going to bring it here, but he _is_. He’s determined.

Assuming that nothing has changed in the last few months, it’s going to take a trip to the Celadon department store. It’s the only place that _would_ sell something like that. There might be other places, but Red doesn’t know about them, and he’d prefer to go somewhere he’s been before anyway.

Money isn’t an issue. He still has money left over from his journey across Kanto, and the few people who have found him and inevitably lost to him over the last few months have given him significantly more money than they’d give other trainers. He isn’t sure if they’re rich, or if they’re scared of him, or if they take pity on him for living up here alone.

Whatever their reason, they shouldn’t.

There’s nothing to spend it on.

…except washing machines, he guesses.

A washing machine to bring up the side of the tallest mountain in Kanto.

It should be impossible, it _would_ be impossible if he was on his own, but he’s not. Maybe not his own, he’s not on his own. He has his Pokemon.

And if there’s one thing Red knows a lot about, it’s Pokemon.

He’s not sure how he’ll get one for himself, but he knows that there’s a Pokemon from Sinnoh that can enter and take the form of machines. Ovens, fridges, fans, and most importantly, washing machines.

Rotom.

Before he left, he’d been hearing news of people using it in their Pokedex or their phone. Red doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a Pokemon living inside his Pokedex, and there’s no reception up here, so he’s never needed a phone. For a _washing machine,_ though, that could work. He can’t put a washing machine inside a Pokeball, but he can put a Rotom in a washing machine and put _it_ in the Pokeball.

The problem is that Red is not in Sinnoh, he doesn’t have a Rotom, and he doesn’t particularly want to fly the whole way there for a single Pokemon. It seems cruel to do that to Charizard, and it would take an uncomfortably long time, too. It’s not a simple half hour or hour into the middle of Kanto and back. Sinnoh would require _days_ of flying, and at that stage, maybe he’d be better off just moving there.

(Hey. He’d never thought about that. Maybe he _should_ -

No, he’d put too much effort into Mount Silver now. It would be a waste to leave it all behind. Besides, people in Sinnoh would know all about him. News travelled fast, particularly news of a child singlehandedly taking down the Pokemon Mafia and then becoming Champion. He’d end up running into the same problems he’d had before, the people and the press and...

Sinnoh was out of the question.)

Bill. He needs to go and ask Bill. If Bill doesn’t have one _himself_ , he’ll surely know how to get one. Maybe he could call in a favour from a friend in Sinnoh, or borrow it from someone’s PC without telling them. They probably wouldn’t notice. People don’t check their PCs enough.

That would be illegal, but Red is immune to the law as long as the cops can’t find him. He’s thirteen, it’s not like the first place they’ll check is up Mount Silver.

Fortunately for some random trainer in Sinnoh, Bill does in fact have a Rotom. Unfortunately for _Red_ , he refuses to trade it for anything other than a Dragonite. He wants something rare, and Bill is more of a collector than a trainer. Red begrudgingly removes Dragonite’s Pokeball from the PC and trades it with Bill. The machine blows dust off the Pokeball, and Red feels bad for a moment. He hasn’t seen Dragonite since he evolved it.

Then he feels less bad, because Bill will probably take Dragonite out of the PC more often than Red does. It will have a better life here.

Red sets off to Celadon City with Rotom in hand and one less Dragonite in his collection.

On the fourth level of the Celadon Department Store, he takes Rotom out of its Pokeball to choose a washing machine. There’s a wide array of them, all with different features that Red didn’t know a washer-dryer could _have_. The sheer amount of them makes him glad that Rotom is picking, though he tries to guide the Pokemon to choose something on the less pricier side. Rotom, of course, after minutes of deliberating, chooses the most high-tech washing machine in the building, and Red, looking at his wallet with a gulp, nods.

People are looking at him and laughing. They don’t recognise him, he assumes, since he’s done everything he can to look different. They’re probably laughing at the fact that he is a thirteen year old buying a washing machine for his pet Rotom, and the cashier laughs too, until Red hands over a fat stack of Pokedollars and they all shut up and give him his washing machine.

And with that, Red goes home. They set up the washer-dryer in a corner of his cabin, and it takes Pikachu a few tries to work out what voltage it’s running on, but eventually it’s running smoothly.

Red puts today’s clothes into a machine knowing they’ll be dry when he wakes up.

And then he decides, well, if he could get a washing machine up here, he could probably get a fridge, too. Maybe a microwave.

Before long, Red’s cabin is looking less like a haphazardly thrown together refuge, and more like a place where someone might actually live. It has a fridge, a door, an oven, and most importantly, structural integrity. That last one isn’t really related to Rotom, but as soon as Red visited Celadon a few more times, he got scared of how stable all their houses looked compared to his, and he got a few tips from a builder so that the entire thing wouldn’t collapse in on him during a blizzard.

Rotom takes the form of the PC, rather than staying in its Pokeball, and as soon as Bill realises, he adds a few new features. Mostly to keep Rotom happy, but the improved connection and non-Pokemon object transfer is making Red’s life a lot easier.

He’s beginning to realise that where he is now is no longer temporary. He’s left everyone else behind for solitude on a frozen mountain.

Feeling a pang of guilt, Red uses the PC to send a message to his mother to let her know that he’s alive. That should be enough for her, for now.

He crawls into bed and sleeps, Pikachu curled up on his legs. His cabin, his _home,_ keeps them warm and dry for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> to answer the question that everyone's always wondering for fanfics like this: red pees in the snow because it's too hard to get plumbing up a big god damn mountain


End file.
